Reliance Industries has added 2.32 lakh employees to enhance its overall strength to 3.43 lakh last fiscal. The company’s retail arm added 1.68 lakh jobs, while Jio recruited 57,883 people.
Reliance Retail built capabilities through organic growth, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships with investments of about ₹30,000 crore and added over 2,500 new stores last year. This translates into an average addition of around seven stores every day.
It acquired B2B marketplace Just Dial in a boost to the digital ecosystem for millions of partner merchants and MSMEs. Retail businesses invested over ₹9,700 crore in partnerships last fiscal.
Major strides
Reliance Jio had a total subscriber base of 410.2 million across mobility and fixed broadband as of March-end and added over 130 million customers in FY22. It became the largest fibre-to-the-home services provider in India with over five million connected premises within two years of launching the JioFiber service, with an average data usage of almost 300GB per home per month.
The telecom-to-energy conglomerate, which is India’s most valued company with a market capitalisation of ₹17.45 lakh crore, made major strides across its retail, telecom, energy and digital businesses in 2021-22, said Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, adding that digital services, retail and oil-to-chemicals are its three “extremely agile and highly potent growth engines”.
To replace the use of single-use plastic with sustainable materials, Reliance has developed a bio-degradable and compostable polymer, Polybutylene adipate terephthalate. Reliance developed a new generation of air-impermeable functional polymers, which can be used as a puncture-proof inner liner for automotive tyres. This product will also add value to next-gen electric vehicles and contribute to a net zero-carbon economy.
Having built the first on-the-go charging station, first cluster charging station, first fleet charging hub, and first charging app, Jio-BP now has over 300 charging points across the country, the report said.
Reliance expects its green power segment to emerge as a growth engine for the company that would potentially outperform other businesses in the next 5-7 years, said Ambani.
Acquisitions and investments
During FY22, Reliance completed acquisitions and investments of over ₹5,500 crore to build capabilities in new energy. The development of the Dhirubhai Ambani Green Energy Giga Complex began on 5,000 acres in Jamnagar, which will be among the largest integrated renewable energy manufacturing facilities in the world.
The company has also signed an MoU with the Gujarat government for a total investment of ₹5.95 lakh crore in green energy. These projects have the potential to create 10 lakh direct and indirect employment opportunities in the State.